Re: how do I keep my neighbor from hijacking my internet?

Hi xSparrow,

We apologize for whatever inconvenience this has caused you. By setting up security features on your wireless network, you can make it very difficult for uninvited people to connect to your network. Your wireless network doesn't stop at the walls of your home or office. It's possible, that your wireless network can extend more than 300 feet from your wireless router. If you live in a condominium or apartment you may have many neighbors who can access your wireless network if it's not secured properly. If you live in a house, your neighbors and even people on the street may be able to connect to your wireless router.

It's important to take the appropriate steps in securing your device to protect your wireless network. People who can connect to your wireless network might be able to:

a. Monitor the Web sites you visit, copy your usernames and passwords, and read your e-mail and other communications as they travel across the network.

The basic and the most common step you can do to prevent uninvited people to connect to your network is to enable wireless network security. Please follow the steps below on how you can go about enabling the wireless network security for your 2 wire router:

6. On the wireless security section, check the Enable box next to wireless network security.

7. Click Save button.

Here are additional things you can do the following to secure your Wireless Network:

Enable Encryption

Let's start with the basics. Most of the wireless gateways/ routers have the encryption disabled by default. Make sure to enable either WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) or WPA (WiFi Protected Access) wireless encryption.Using WPA is recommended because it's more secure, but is sometimes a bit harder to set up than WEP. If you want your wireless network to really be secure, WPA is the preferred method. (Important!

We do not recommend disabling Encryption. Make sure you are using WEP or WPA for your wireless network.)

Change Your Gateway/Router SSID name

(Wireless Network Name) refers to the name of your wireless connection that you see on Available Wireless Connections while trying to connect from your computer. Changing the name itself doesn't protect your completely but it may discourage someone from hacking your network.

Don't use something like your name, address, birth date, or other things that make it easy for someone to identify you. If you leave it '2wire2701' (or whatever the default is on your gateway/router), your computer automatically connects to every other network it encounters with the same name, and not every wireless network is a good and secure thing to connect to. Check the SSID on your AT&T provided gateway/router.

Do Not Disable SSID Broadcast

Do not disable the SSID Broadcast feature of your gateway/router.

Hackers have sophisticated tools that can easily get information, so disabling SSID Broadcast won't improve your security. If you disable SSID Broadcast, it makes it difficult to connect other computers and devices, like wireless gaming consoles, printers etc., to your network.

Additionally, if you have SSID Broadcast disabled, hackers can use technology to pretend to be your gateway/router and gain access to your computer.

Enable MAC Address Filtering

If you want to go one step further in locking down your network there is another step that only allows access to trusted devices. You can enable MAC Address (Media Access Control) filtering on your gateway/router. The MAC address is a unique identifier attached to the network adapter on a device like your notebook computer or wireless gaming console. If you enable Mac Address filtering on your network, you need to find and enter into your gateway/router the 12-character MAC address of every system that connects to the network. This can be time consuming to set up, especially if you have a lot of wireless devices and if there are a lot of different users on your network.

Network Security Tips

a. Create a strong gateway/router admin password. Use something hard to guess that contains both letters and numbers. Special characters such as *#%$ etc. are not supported by most gateways/routers. There is no maximum length. However, the longer the key, the better to keep your network safe.

b. Change your WEP key once a month. If someone does figure out how to access your network, they will be locked out after you update it.

c. On public Wi-Fi Networks from your home/office make sure web sites you visit that require username or passwords are secure. You can check whether a web site is secure by looking in the browser's address bar. A secure web site address starts with "https".

You may also visit our Help Site at http://www.att.com/esupport for solutions to your frequently asked questions.You can also reach our support agents over the phone at:

1 888 321 2375 if you are from these states - KY, TN, NC, SC, LA, MS, AL, GA, FL; and

Re: how do I keep my neighbor from hijacking my internet?

When you follow the 7 steps to enable wirelss security. Do you then need to estabvlish a password? Do yu need that passowrd on all your devices to log in with? If so, how do you hanlde passwords on Roku that we use to stream NetFlix etc.to the TV?